A newspaper is never just a newspaper – for some, it's a critical part of an early morning ritual; for others, it's an artifact that facilitates inter-generational connection between family members. Often, it's a source of inspiration, voice of the generation and cultural northern star. Berita Harian is Singapore's oldest Malay-language daily newspaper, providing coverage of local and international current affairs for an increasingly mixed audience; transcending generations, age-groups and nationalities.

When Berita Harian made the shift into the digital realm, their default instinct was to establish an online presence that was as close to their original direction as possible, however this proved to be a barrier for the newer generation. The news platform needed to meet its more culturally-diverse, tech-aware audience where they were at, through the various channels and devices on which they engage virtually.

“A newspaper is never just a newspaper.
For some, it's a critical part of an early morning ritual; for others, it's an artifact that facilitates inter- generational connection between family members.”
_{Alistair Norris, Senior Associate Directer, Berita Harian}

To authentically understand the inner workings of Berita Harian so as to generate real, sustainable progress, the Agency team embedded ourselves within SPH (Singapore Press Holdings) – Berita Harian’s publishing company. Our dedicated task group consisted of a mix of designers, journalists, editors, product managers and developers from both Agency and SPH. We were a team on a mission.

Discovering what exactly needed to be discovered
to reimagine Berita Harian's way forward

We spoke to five SPH departments across 12 interview sessions. A collection of insights was starting to take shape; one from which we would be able to explicitly pinpoint the issues that presented as an invisible barrier for the audience and, ultimately, to become more equipped to come up with strategic solutions.

Breaking down the current content to get to the root of the matter

Through a content audit, we mapped out Berita Harian's information architecture, and more importantly, we were able to track the user journey of how web pages and content blocks were consumed on the platform. We were able to identify "roadblocks" and "dead ends" where readers would stumble on their content journey, or worse, disappear altogether. Some key issues we discovered were that there was an overall lack of guidance despite being overloaded with options on the webpage; this presented itself as lack of structure within content areas, inconsistent colour discipline or design cohesion, a surplus of dead content, and difficulty in navigating between articles.

Listening to the data speak for itself, we were able to track audience demographics and a crucial insight emerged: the majority of Berita Harian's online consumers are millennials; more than 30% of whom are between 25 and 34 years old, and nearly 30% of whom are under 44 years old.

Gleaning a deeper understanding of the readers and consumers

We spoke to five Malays and one Malay speaker across eight sessions to better understand their behaviours and interactions with both Berita Harian and media content in general. Through heuristic user testing, we recorded how they interacted with the (old) website, and through in-depth conversations, we uncovered the nature of their relationships with Berita Harian. Some engaged with the newspaper for work, some for the sales & promotions within, others for the love of the Malay language. Most expressed a nostalgia for the Berita Harian they grew up with, one that has created and supported content for multiple generations.

Developing solutions driven by tested knowledge

Informed by our research and discussions, we were able to develop three key themes that would tackle our main challenge: how might Berita Harian become the Malay lens for the current and coming generations? These themes were: to explore content formats within Berita Harian – such as podcasts – and align with a younger, more digitally-native audience; to create new digital tools that could enhance the overall Berita Harian experience; and to return to Berita Harian's heyday and reinvoke familiar names in journalism by situating their perspectives centrestage

Moving forward

With a new, more inclusive web experience, Berita Harian set a benchmark for moving forward. With it, they set up the scaffolding to easily support more enhancements to the experience, should the need arise. In turn, Berita Harian’s digital existence was transformed to become more future-ready than ever. This project was an important reminder that ultimately, products experienced by humans are too often built on the premise of assumptions; we need to start building them from the ground up at inception, based on foundations of tested knowledge and human-centred insights.

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